#17 Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

In the seminal high tech book, The Mythical Man Month, IBM veteran and computer science professor Frederick Brooks argued that adding manpower to complex software projects actually delayed progress.

This is the book that I want to talk to you about today. It's The Everything Store, Jeff Bezos, and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone.

I actually did a podcast on Sam Walton's autobiography that talks about Sam's use of his plane.

Before he joined the company, he had read the book Odyssey, Pepsi to Apple by John Sculley, who had joined Apple as CEO in the mid-1980s, and then ousted Steve Jobs in a boardroom coup.

She was reading the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, and was thinking about how Bezos' leadership style compared to the late Apple co-founders' famously brusque and direct demeanor.

All of Isaacson's, I enjoy all of Isaacson's books, actually. Benjamin Franklin book's fantastic.

Bezos had invited Walton's book thoroughly and wove the Walmart's founder's credo about frugality and a bias for action into the cultural fabric of Amazon.

At a two-day management and board off-site later that year, Amazon invited business thinker Jim Collins to present the findings from his soon-to-be-published book, Good to Great.

Before he joined the company, he had read the book Odyssey, Pepsi to Apple by John Sculley, who had joined Apple as CEO in the mid-1980s, and then ousted Steve Jobs in a boardroom coup.

As I read the Jobs book, I really had to wonder if that sometimes harsh intensity isn't an essential element when so much of what you want to do requires boldness, immediacy, ruthlessness, purpose prioritization, and risk.

The podcast discusses the founder of Nike and his obsession with running, suggesting that if more people ran, the world would be a better place.

I just did one on his newly-adorned Da Vinci book, but he does a really great job.